Formula E supports people with visual impairments: "What about people who can't watch the race?"

How can we make it possible for people with visual impairments to experience a Formula E race? The electric racing series has been looking into this very question - and the answer was a great chance find, as Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds reports. From the coming season, audio reports will be published after the races to provide an exciting and vivid account of the races.

Formula E has been working for a long time to make the racing series accessible to more people and to continuously improve the fan experience. At the end of May 2024, the then Chief Marketing Officer Henry Chilcott explained in an interview with Google Cloud: "We can see in the future, harnessing these technologies (artificial intelligence) to drive our fans ever closer to the sport." What nobody could have guessed at the time: just a few months later, this would become a reality.

Originally, however, the technology was not developed with the aim of being used for people with visual impairments. It was only later that this potential was realised. "We organised a big Google hackathon on AI last year, which took place at our race in London," describes Jeff Dodds in a recent episode of the podcast The Room Where It Happened. "1.000 people came to that hackathon. And at the end of it, the piece of programming that won: As the race commentary finished, within 30 seconds it had packaged up the commentary, turned it into a 5 minute audio summary of the race and translated that into 40 different languages to syndicate it around the world."

In fact, with 1.130 participants, the event was even entered in the Guinness Book of Records for several months until the number was surpassed by another event. The developers had eight hours to develop AI solutions in seven predefined subject areas - all directly related to Formula E races, of course.

"The thrill of electric racing should be accessible to everyone"

"What was super cool about that was: 'What about the people who are visually impaired, so can't watch the race. Can you use the same technology to provide them audio description or a better a description of what's happened at the end of the race using the same technology?'," Dodds continues. "So we actually do a partnership with the RNIB (Royal National Institute of Blind People) to look at how we take that technology to support people who are vision impaired. The thrill of electric racing should be accessible to everyone."

Last season, there were focus groups during the race weekends in Berlin and London, where Formula E worked with Google Cloud and RNIB to test the technology and put the results to the test. "This innovative collaboration with Google Cloud is a fantastic example of how technology can be used for good, creating a brand-new way for blind and visually impaired fans to experience the drama and emotion of our sport," said Dodds.

The collaboration with the RNIB ensures that the result really fulfils the purpose and that all important aspects are taken into account. "Audio description transforms how blind and partially sighted motor sport fans can fully engage in enjoying the full racing spectacle, taking in the visceral sounds of cars on the track while feeling the passion of the crowd," said Sonali Rai, Head of Media Culture and Immersive Technologies at the RNIB.

More than 15 languages are planned

To create the audio report, several steps are taken: The live commentary of the race is transcribed. The transcript is then analysed together with the official race information. The important events of the race are thus identified and a race summary is generated. Finally, the text is converted into speech, creating an audio report that is ready for distribution. This entire process should be completed within a few minutes of the end of the race.

The resulting reports will then be published worldwide on Spotify and other audio platforms. They will be available in more than 15 languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Mandarin and Arabic.

The upcoming Formula E season starts in just a few weeks: The first race, the Sao Paulo E-Prix in Brazil, will take place on 6 December. The first audio descriptions will then be available after the E-Prix.